Deep
Eye Care Foundation commenced its strenuous journey as a
non profitable, non government, community based organization
on 9th October, 2008 (the world sight day that year) on
the outskirts of Rangpur city, at Akkelpur, Darshona, with
a view to providing equitable and quality eye care services
to all the people in Greater Rangpur, comprising of Rangpur,
Gaibandha, Nilphamari, Kurigram and Lalmonirhat districts.
Since its inception, it has always been a matter of special
emphasis to us to reach the unreached people, to reach out
to the poorest segment of the society where the impact of
needless avoidable blindness is most damaging. As a community
based organization, to us, it has always been a top priority
to ensure and promote people's participation in its activities
for achieving its aim. Though primarily we set Greater Rangpur
to be our working area, we desire to extend our activities
beyond that boundary if and when plausible and possible.
There is no denying that those years, we have come past
since its inception, have proved crucial, decisive and promising
for the organization together with tried our patience, strength,
ability, skill and depth of commitment to works none the
less. We have had to come past strenuous ways since we started
our journey against the backdrop of a dire scenario of staggeringly
meager eye care services available compared to the bulk
and gravity of vision impairment prevailing in our proposed
working area of Greater Rangpur. Moreover, under a huge
financial restraint and resource constraint, we dared assert
our commitment to promoting DECF as a center of excellence
in eye care services and at the same time reaching the target
set by "Vision 2020", the global strategy for
the elimination of needless avoidable blindness from the
world by the year 2020.
In an underdeveloped country like ours, government alone
cannot suffice to match and meet the health needs owing
to a number of hurdles like growing population, insufficient
infrastructure, low per capita income, aging population,
diseases in pandemic proportions, illiteracy and frequent
natural disasters etc. Quite reasonably, DECF came with
a mission to supplement the efforts of the government and
other organizations working in this field so as to better
eye care service scenario and make a tangible contribution
to achieving the objective of ``Vision 2020''.
Our task appeared to be colossal as the statistics of blindness
and visual impairment were overwhelmingly massive in Bangladesh
and Greater Rangpur was no exception to this as a lagging
behind part of a poor country like ours. Then Greater Rangpur
had a population of fifteen million, of which 1.5% was blind
and proportion of cataract accounted blindness was 79.6%.
Against that huge need availability of eye care service
was agonizingly scarce.

Before
DECF started working in this field, there had been a few
organizations like eye department of Rangpur Medical College,
Jaheda Charitable Center, Community Eye Care Center and
a very few private practitioner providing only some specific
eye care services like general eye treatment, refraction
and a few cataract surgeries. In addition to this, lack
of awareness among the majority of poverty stricken people
concerning eye care and health and their financial inability
added to the gravity of the situation. So we embroiled
ourselves quite knowing where we were, where we would
have to go and how to get there. And, as an organization
at its initial stage, though its achievements are not
enough to tangibly change the visual impairment scenario
of Greater Rangpur, it obviously has made the most comprehensive
contribution of all working here.

Over
those years since its opening, DECF has managed to maintain
its growth as a fast evolving organization by extending
its installations, expanding its facilities and diversifying
its services as well as activities. Now it has a three
storied building furnished with modern eye care equipments
and operation facilities which provides both indoor and
outdoor services operated by skilled manpower. It also
has a separate installation having 4,500sqft space which
works as a full-fledged pediatric unit and another three
storied building for conducting various training sessions
is on the way to be completed. Along with these physical
and visible developments, the number of patients receiving
treatment from here has gone eight times higher than it
was in 2008. Together with those attainments, DECF has
raised and stretched its Outreach programs and related
services quite comprehensively. It has managed to extend
and branch out its activities quite noticeably to ensure
community Involvement, building awareness and confidence
among the people together with making sure behavioral
change communication. It has also expanded its sub-specialty
services to ensure all types of eye treatments. To accelerate
the pace of human resource development, DECF has considerately
increased training facilities for its staffs within the
country and abroad as well as arranged multiple training
sessions for ophthalmic assistants and community health
workers. More over we are all wholeheartedly committed
to working to the best of our capacity to reach the stature
of a sustainable organization and pay gratitude to Him
since working as a part of this comprehensive campaign
has widened our insight and vision, heightened our aptitude
and made us more committed to what we are doing. All these
are sure to add to the likely future development of the
organization.

Dr. Khairul
Islam, Executive Director, Deep Eye Care Foundation, Rangpur,
was selected as “Eye Health Hero-2016” for the first time
from Bangladesh. Our reputations and endeavors in the field of eye care
sectors highly recognized and appreciated by achieving this world famous
award by him.
Details...http://heroes.iapb.org